Trump administration asks Supreme Court, for a third time, to revive mail-ballot rule blocked days before midterms

The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Sunday to clear the way for a new U.S. Postal Service rule requiring states to upload voter and ballot-recipient lists to a federal portal and print unique barcodes on mail-ballot envelopes, in the third emergency Supreme Court application over the same rule in roughly a year.

The application, docketed as USPS v. State of California, No. 26A305, was filed at 9:44 a.m. ET Sunday, according to the stay application filed with the Supreme Court. It seeks to overturn a preliminary injunction issued Friday by U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Massachusetts, who ruled the rule was likely unconstitutional and that states could not realistically comply before ballots go out for November's midterm elections.

A yearlong fight over who controls ballot mailing rules

The dispute traces to a March 31 executive order, "Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections," which directed USPS to build a system for vetting mail-ballot recipients nationwide. Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia sued to block it, arguing that mail-ballot procedures are constitutionally reserved to the states under the Elections Clause and that Congress never authorized the Postal Service to condition ballot delivery on a federal verification system. In August, the Supreme Court allowed an earlier version of the order to proceed on procedural grounds because the rule had not yet been finalized, a ruling the administration read as a green light and the states read narrowly as leaving the merits of the dispute untouched. USPS then finalized the rule in late August, prompting the states to sue again almost immediately.

Judge Talwani's injunction — detailed in the underlying case, California v. USPS, No. 1:26-cv-13917-IT, and referenced in a letter California filed with the Supreme Court — found that Congress "never delegated its Elections Clause power to the USPS." Her ruling built on the same legal theory the states advanced in their original suit, but this time with a full evidentiary record showing that several states had already begun printing ballots without the barcodes the rule would require.

North Carolina, where ballots are already being printed and mailed under state law, has become a flashpoint for urgency in the case, since any Supreme Court order would need to arrive before that state's mailing schedule is disrupted further. State election officials there said reprinting ballots to add the required barcodes midstream would be logistically difficult and could itself delay mailing to overseas and military voters, who are entitled under federal law to receive ballots by a set deadline before the election.

Dueling arguments over disenfranchisement and delay

Solicitor General John Sauer argued in the government's filing that "there is a grave risk that States may not have taken the necessary steps to comply" if the rule remains blocked much longer, framing the injunction itself as the source of last-minute chaos. Judge Talwani took the opposite view, writing that enforcing the rule now "threatens disenfranchisement" of voters who would be caught in a compliance scramble weeks before ballots must be finalized.

"The ballots are printed, the process is underway, and North Carolinians deserve a lawful and orderly election," North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson said.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta, the case's co-lead plaintiff, said in a statement posted to his office's website that the states had "secured longer-term relief that will keep the USPS changes blocked while our case moves forward," describing Friday's injunction as a durable win rather than a temporary reprieve. The dispute has taken on outsized political weight because it lands weeks before a midterm election in which control of both chambers of Congress is considered competitive, giving both sides strong incentive to resolve the mail-ballot question quickly rather than let uncertainty linger into the fall.

Who is affected

The rule, if allowed to take effect, would apply to election officials in all 50 states who must decide whether to upload voter and ballot-recipient data to the new federal portal and print the required barcodes on outgoing envelopes. Election administrators in the 23 states that sued have said the deadline pressure alone — not just the rule's substance — could disrupt ballot mailing regardless of how the legal fight is resolved, since printing contracts and postal logistics are typically locked in months in advance. Millions of voters who rely on mail ballots for the midterms are the ultimate stakeholders in how quickly the court acts, particularly older voters, voters with disabilities and members of the military and their families stationed overseas, who disproportionately depend on mail voting.

What happens next

The Supreme Court's docket shows the justices have not yet set a response deadline for the states in the new filing. SCOTUSblog reported that a ruling is expected within days given the approaching mailing deadlines in several states. The Justice Department is separately pursuing an appeal of Talwani's injunction before the First Circuit, a parallel track that could still be running when ballots begin going out regardless of what the Supreme Court decides on the emergency application. NBC News reported that election officials in several plaintiff states were proceeding with existing mailing schedules while the case is pending, on the assumption the injunction will hold. Whatever the justices decide, election law specialists say the underlying question of how much authority Congress and the executive branch have over mail-ballot procedures is unlikely to be fully resolved before November, meaning further litigation is likely regardless of the outcome of this specific emergency application.